Motor vehicles have traditionally been equipped with a spare wheel to use in the event that one of the tires became flat or disinflated. Along with a spare wheel, some means for raising the vehicle in order to change the wheel must be provided. This means of lifting the vehicle has usually been some form of vehicle jack.
Some vehicle jacks have heretofore been designed to be positioned underneath the vehicle, usually just to the inside of the tire to be changed and the designated lifting point is generally the axle or other nearby wheel support structure. These jacks may be either of a scissors-type or a telescoping-type. In both cases, a rotary force is applied to the jack to cause it to move vertically to either raise or lower the vehicle depending upon whether the rotary motion is clockwise or counterclockwise.
To impart that rotary motion to the jack, a handle is attached to the jack spindle both to transmit the rotary motion to the jack and to help position the jack at the proper lifting location underneath the vehicle. The jack handle must be long enough to reach from the perimeter of the vehicle to the jack which is positioned underneath the vehicle while still allowing enough room for the operator to apply the rotary motion to the end of the handle remote from the jack.
In the past, there have been jack handles which were of one piece rod construction with a tip formed on one end to engage the jack spindle and a crank handle formed on the other end by two 90.degree. bends. Since the length of these handles was fixed, a suitable location had to be found to store the handle inside the vehicle.
Other handles have been made in two pieces and then permanently fastened together at the juncture of the two pieces. The connection between the two pieces was usually a rivet or other similar permanent connector which allowed the two sections to fold or pivot 180.degree. when not in use so as to require only about half the storage space required for a one-piece handle. Examples of such two-piece handles are to be found, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,254,085; 2,318,108; and, 4,586,696. Handles were also made in two sections which could be temporarily connected together to actuate the jack and then separated into two pieces for storage. One such jack is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,671,636. Another such handle is currently in use in a 1997 Jeep Wrangler. This Jeep Wrangler jack handle comprises two pieces, one identified as a jack handle and the other as a jack handle extension, both of which are made from solid rod or wire. The connection of the two sections is accomplished by flattening one end of the jack handle so as to enable that flattened jack handle section to be received within an upset or enlarged end and an internal cavity of the jack handle extension. The two sections of the Jeep Wrangler jack handle are connected by inserting the flattened end of the jack handle into the cavity in the opposite upset or enlarged end of the jack handle extension. In order to maintain the two sections in assembled relationship, so as to enable the jack to be pulled or pushed to position or remove the jack from underneath the vehicle, a thumb screw extends through the upset or enlargement on the jack handle extension into engagement with the flattened end of the jack handle.
All of the jack handles heretofore described suffer from one deficiency or another. The one-piece jack handle requires too long a storage space to be practical for many applications. The two-piece permanently pivotally connected jack handles are relatively expensive, difficult to operate, and subject to breakage, and the two-piece separable jack handles heretofore described are relatively complex and expensive and require specialized and expensive machinery for manufacture. It has therefore been an objective of this invention to provide a two-piece jack handle which overcomes all of these limitations and which may be economically fabricated from wire rod.
It has been another objective of this invention to provide a two-piece jack handle in which the two pieces may be easily and quickly connected and disconnected.
Still another objective of this invention has been to provide a two-piece jack handle which meets these other objectives, but which also includes a connection at the end of the jack handle extension which may be used for the auxiliary purpose of operating a winch mechanism for raising and lowering a spare wheel stored on the underside of a vehicle.